Common use of Foreword Clause in Contracts

Foreword. The general purpose of this Public Works Joint Powers Mutual Aid Agreement (“Agreement”) is to provide a process for units of government to share public works personnel and equipment with other agencies within the State of Minnesota. This Agreement specifically allows a requesting party to select the resources that best meets the needs of a given situation. A requesting party may call upon any other participating party for mutual aid. There is no requirement to make requests through a particular party. In addition, this Agreement should not be interpreted as being limited to providing resources to deal with only major catastrophic situations. Participating parties can utilize the resources for many reasons including routine circumstances such as training efforts, maintenance operations, joint-projects, and back-up support service. This Agreement provides the flexibility for all units of government to use the resources located among all participating parties in the State of Minnesota. The decision as to when to invoke mutual aid and whether to respond is left to the discretion of the requesting or sending party. Each unit of government should acquaint supervisory personnel with any internal procedures used for mutual aid. While the Joint Powers Agreement does not require particular words or actions to initiate mutual aid, agencies should be clear about whether mutual aid is being requested and what type of assistance is requested. The responding agency should also be clear about what, if any, assistance they will provide in response to the request. Parties should not self-deploy. Furthermore, each staff member within a department should have a basic familiarity with mutual aid, the responsibilities when reporting to another unit of government and the protections afforded under the unit of government’s workers’ compensation. For liability reasons, management of a mutual aid situation is under the control of the requesting party. However, the sending party has discretion whether to provide personnel or equipment and can recall such assistance at any time. While there is no hard and fast time limit related to requests for mutual aid, the commitment of resources can be taxing on agencies. In addition, in some situations an advantage can be gained by ending a mutual aid request and entering into a different form of contractual assistance. In order to keep this mutual aid agreement closer to local level of government, Hennepin County Emergency Management (“HCEM”) has volunteered to serve as the administrative coordinator for the units of government entering into this Agreement. When a community adopts this Agreement a fully executed copy of the Agreement needs to be forwarded to HCEM. Each unit of government is responsible for entering and updating available unit of government resources. Resources will now be listed online in a mutually agreed upon resource management database. The parties to this Agreement are solely responsible for updating their available resources in the agreed upon database. The effective date for this Agreement is October 1, 2018. This date was established to allow enough time for agencies to receive the appropriate authority. Participation can be started upon execution of the Agreement and is effective for a unit of government upon its submission of the signed Agreement to HCEM. Agencies that elect not to participate in the Agreement may be bound by other existing mutual aid agreement or state statutes.